Deportation Train
Deportation train departure 19 May 1944 at the dutch Westerbork transit camp filmed by Rudolf Breslauer. Shortly thereafter 20 km north in the dutch town Assen, train cars are added from the belgian Transport XXV (25) from transit camp Kazerne Dossin (Dossin barracks) in Mechelen, and the combined transport with Jews, Sinti and Roma, including Settela Steinbach, continues to the east …

Eating Tulip Bulbs ~ Hunger Winter Holland 1944-1945 .
(silent film)
My mother did not tell me much and no details on her experiences in World War 2, except for the Hongerwinter (“Hunger winter”) – the Dutch famine of 1944–45 – that she had to eat tulip bulbs.

As children in the 1950s our mother always told us to finish and clean our plates (and pretty large portions, served by our parents) , before being allowed to leave the table. The one thing we were regularly reminded of was the famine my mother and others had experienced…and that she even had to eat tulip bulbs – then a 16-year old teenager living (with her parents) in the city of The Hague during the Dutch famine of 1944–45.
The famine was caused by a German blockade plus the harsh winter blocking alternative water routes, that cut off food and fuel shipments to the western Netherlands were food stocks rapidly ran out in the large cities of The Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam . Tulip bulbs and sugar beets were commonly consumed. Trees in The Hague city woods (like Scheveningse Bosjes shown in the film) were cut , and in the end furniture and houses were dismantled to provide fuel for heating.
When the famine was worst and deaths were reaching a peak , the Bezuidenhout neighbourhood of The Hague – were my mothers family lived – was bombed by British bomber crews with the wrong coordinates flying in fog and clouds, causing widespread death and destruction. More on that ‘Bombing of the Bezuidenhout’ later this month.

Menno Huizinga (1907–1947) took photographs illegally during the occupation , mainly in his hometown The Hague in Holland. He was a member of the group of Dutch photographers ‘De Ondergedoken Camera’ (1943-1945) – The Underground Camera – doing resistance work during the Second World War.

‘Eating Tulip Bulbs ~ Hunger Winter Holland 1944-1945’ is a silent film by Michel van der Burg , using photographs captured during this ‘Hunger winter’ 1944-1945 by Menno Huizinga in Holland (mainly in The Hague) from the public domain collection of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies , curated by Dutch Network War Collections (NOB) for WO2 Open Data Depot via Wikimedia Commons.

Ashes Pond
An unforgettable moment for me that ‘touching the ash pond’ I filmed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, were I was filming Simon Gronowski and Koenraad Tinel, May 2012, for the upcoming documentary film Miracles.
Into this pond were dumped the ashes of the people, who were murdered (gassed) and burned at the nearby crematorium.
Sharing this moment today for International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camps. Courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp in Poland, May 24th 2012.
Film : Ashes Pond (20200127) Michel van der Burg | miracles.media

When the Westerbork camp was liberated in 1945 – 75 years ago – the Westerbork Film reels began a new life.

The Westerbork Films Collection – silent film – is unique…the only authentic documentary footage filmed in a Nazi camp – a waiting room for death in the Netherlands for more than 100,000 Jews, and Roma, Sinti, and resistance workers. A documentary filmed in the spring of 1944 in the Westerbork transit camp, by the German-Jewish camp prisoner Rudolf Werner Breslauer, who had been working already some 2 years as a photographer in the camp. A ‘Kulturfilm’ commissioned by camp commander, SS-Obersturmbannführer, Albert Konrad Gemmeker, to convince the Gestapo headquarters of Westerbork’s vital production value.

The Westerbork camp had been set up by the Dutch government before the war in Holland, in 1939, as a central refugees camp for Jewish refugees from Nazi-Germany.
In 1942 , when the Nazi’s decided to start ‘Entjüdung’ of the Netherlands, they took over the camp and named it Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager Westerbork , for use as central transit camp for deportation of mainly Jews, and Roma, Sinti, and resistance people to eastern Europe.

Rudolf Breslauer started filming March 1944 – around the same time the camp status changed to ‘Arbeitslager’.

This film on the daily life of the Westerbork prisoners was added in 2017 to the Memory of the World Register of Unesco.

Here a compilation (album) of the film reels listed in the Unesco Memory of the World registry of ‘Le film de Westerbork’ (Ref. 1) of all known Westerbork film footage shot by Rudolf Breslauer (Werner Rudolf Breslauer) in Camp Westerbork in 1944 – the inventory deposited in the Unesco Memory of the World Registry of documentary heritage in 2017.

This Westerbork Films Collection includes to the best of my knowledge all known footage filmed by Rudolf Breslauer in 1944 in Camp Westerbork, Netherlands – footage that I presented before via several posts in 2019 via my Youtube and Vimeo channels and web sites settela.com and michelvanderburg.com .
The compilation is based on the May 8, 2017 edition of UNESCO Memory of the World document ID code [2016-118] delivered by Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Jan Müller & Hans van der Windt) and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Frank van Vree). Research and reports by Aad Wagenaar, Cherry Duyns, Koert Broersma and Gerard Rossing on the Westerbork film footage formed the basis of the UNESCO documentation (Ref. 1,2,3,4).

This Unesco compilation is divided here for convenience in 3 main parts :

WESTERBORK FILMS COLLECTION – UNESCO ALBUM – PART 1

Westerbork 1986 Film (Acts 1,2,3,4)

This first part is the full film of the montage produced in 1986 by the Netherlands State Archive (RVD) – generally known as the Westerbork Film ‘ACTE’ 1, 2, 3, 4.

The second part is the alternative Westerbork film first presented in the Netherlands (TV Broadcasts) in 1996 – in 2 acts using the early 1990s (re-) discovered ‘rest’ footage reels labeled ‘OVERS’ in dutch (english : Left-Overs) and since presented as alternative Westerbork Film (OVERS) ACTE 1,2 or Rest material 1,2 .
This 1996 ‘alternative’ film includes both new scenes and scenes also present in the 1986 ‘RVD’ original Westerbork film.

Part 3, the last part, is a compilation of all the clips recovered from footage cut out from original film (before the 1986 montage) and lent for use in : 1948 dutch cinema newsreels (Polygoon), and a 1962 dutch TV documentary. Containing – aside from known scenes – also original footage and copies (upscaled 35mm) of scenes never re-edited back into the Westerbork films.

Flammable Films Bunker
Former german bunker (Atlantic Wall) in the dunes along the North Sea near Scheveningen , The Hague, with special safes to store the flammable nitrate films of dutch history from the national dutch archive – historic films for safety reasons not allowed within built-up areas.
Here the Westerbork film footage also was examined in the 1990s for clues about the deportation trains and the name of the girl with the ‘working’ name Esther (by researcher Aad Wagenaar) – later to be identified as Settela.
Here a 1980 Polygoon newsreel on the restauration of this RVD archive bunker with new safes.

Tracing Lost Westerbork Film…1960s RIOD-NTS clip

After the war , in 1946, the National Institute for War Documentation in Holland (Ref 1), known as the ‘RIOD’ (Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie) collected the footage filmed by the Jewish camp prisoner Rudolf Werner Breslauer spring 1944 in the Westerbork transit camp.

Not all of this RIOD raw film footage – 9 reels of film – was handed over in 1986 to the RVD (Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst) , the Dutch National Centre for Information, were these reels were glued together into the 4 parts (Acte 1 , Acte 2 , Acte 3 , and Acte 4) that have become known as the “Westerbork film” (Ref 2).

The story of research on this unique film footage published in the 1997 Dutch book ‘Kamp Westerbork gefilmd’ – Camp Westerbork filmed (Ref 3) – included findings of more film footage on which I reported before : a forgotten reel (Ref 4), an unknown reel (Ref 5) footage in a 1948 Polygoon newsreel (Ref 6, 7) and lost fragments on an extra 1948 Polygoon reel (Ref 8) .

Another ‘lost’ fragment was traced in clips the RIOD had extracted for use in the 60s dutch TV series ‘De bezetting’ (The Occupation) presented by RIOD director Loe de Jong, and directed by Milo Anstadt (Ref 9).

Notes

① memo 20190808 ~ RIOD 1948 ~ National Institute for War Documentation in Holland ~ In the first years after the war, the National Institute for War Documentation in Holland , known as the ‘RIOD’ – Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie – started collecting original documents about the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War. In addition to collecting and organising all these documents RIOD also did research, performed historical studies into the Second World War and the Holocaust. In 1946 the RIOD started the collection of the footage filmed by the Jewish camp prisoner Rudolf Werner Breslauer spring 1944 in the Westerbork transit camp.
Here in this Polygoon cinema newsreel week 3 in 1948 the RIOD’s director Loe de Jong gives the dutch cinema public a look behind the scenes of the RIOD institute.